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Institute of Zoology, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
Haemocyanins are copper-containing respiratory proteins in the arthropod haemolymph. In hexapods, haemocyanins gave rise to hexamerins, which have lost the ability to bind copper and thus oxygen. Hexamerins are thought to act mainly as storage proteins in nonfeeding periods. So far, hexamerins have only been identified in ectognathan hexapods, but not in Entognatha. Here we report the identification of a putative hexamerin from Campodea sp. (Diplura). The full-length cDNA of Campodea sp. hexamerin 1 (CspHex1) measures 2188 bp and translates into a native polypeptide of 667 amino acids. As in other hexamerins, the six copper-coordinating histidines are not conserved. However, sequence comparison and phylogenetic analyses demonstrated that CspHex1 is not closely related to other hexapod hexamerins, which derive from hexapod type 1 haemocyanin subunits in the ectognathan lineage, but rather resembles a derivative of hexapod type 2 haemocyanin subunits. Hence, haemocyanin-related storage proteins emerged at least two times independently in Hexapoda.
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